Explore Your Life’s Peaks and Valleys
In November of 2018, I was having a conversation with my then girlfriend — now wife— as we were sitting at a tiny kitchen table in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in St. Paul, MN. We had both recently completed our first Ironman triathlon — a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and a 26.2 mile run — and we were in a bit of a searching period. We didn’t know how to fill our days or what to chase after.
“What’s your next Ironman?” I asked her
If I’m being honest, it was a question that I was asking myself more than I was asking her.
My days were feeling a bit empty.
I was feeling a bit lost.
But, I knew there were lessons to be learned from my experience leading up to the 140.6 mile race.
Training for an Ironman had given me an incredible amount of focus on a day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month basis for over a year.
My days were clear.
My days were structured.
Each morning when the alarm went off, there was no question what I was focusing on for the day. And, ironically, by focusing on one thing—my BIG, SCARY, HAIRY GOAL—so many other aspects of my life simply took care of themselves and, in many cases, improved during the process.
“What’s Your Next Ironman?”
I kept asking myself the same question over and over.
The question puzzled me deeply for over 3 years.
I’ve always been keen on self-improvement. At times, I often wonder if its due to a deep proclivity for masochism. I say that because improving who we are, at times, can be a very painful process — we have to look deep inside ourselves and the events that have unfolded in our lives.
And, I did just that.
As I took a hard look at my life, I discovered a series of moments that led to my greatest points of satisfaction and wellbeing. These were moments that I felt defined me — told a great story — because I loved sharing those parts of my story with others. I loved sharing the things I learned and how those moments transformed me into the person I became.
These were my peak moments.
In the process, I also discovered the periods that have been the most challenging for me and have led to some of my greatest despair. In a similar fashion, these also became part of my story; however, through this process, I realized a key difference: while my peak moments led to pride, the valley moments created a great sense of shame in me—a story that I didn’t want to tell or, more importantly, a story that I knew I didn’t need to tell.
While exploring these moments, I discovered that my valley moments led to shame—a deep dissatisfaction with life and zero sense of wellbeing—because I wasn’t chasing after, or had quit chasing after, a BIG, SCARY, HAIRY GOAL.
And, on the flip side, I’m most satisfied and find a deep sense of wellbeing when I’m doing meaningful things on a daily basis that move me forward toward a BIG, SCARY, HAIRY GOAL.
“What’s your next Ironman?”
While I think that some version of this question is one of the most important questions that we can ask ourselves to start telling the story we’ve always known that we’re capable of telling, I think we can only get a clear understanding of what that BIG, SCARY, HAIRY GOAL is by taking a deep look at ourselves.
Exploring your life’s peaks and valleys can help highlight themes and habits for you to integrate—or avoid—in your life moving forward.
Activity: Discover Your Peaks and Valleys
From time to time, we likely have moments of reflection when we run through events in our life that have brought us great satisfaction, pride, and joy.
On the flip side, we may also think about those moments and times that have been extremely challenging and brought us great despair.
Rarely, however, do we actually sit down and plot them out to see our life’s Peaks and Valleys on paper.
Now’s the time.
Directions
Time Investment: 30 minutes
On a piece of paper—landscape orientation is best to create room for yourself—draw a small circle on the middle left side of the page and write Birth above it. Then, on the middle right side of the page, draw a small circle and write Present Day above it. Using a ruler, draw a line to connect the two small circles.
In the middle of the top of the page, above the line you just drew, write Peak Moments.
In the middle of the bottom of the page, below the line, write Valley Moments.
Then, simply begin identify significant events of your life with short descriptions of them. Place moments of great satisfaction, joy, and happiness—Peak Moments—above the line connecting Birth and Present Day. Similarly, place moments you’d rather not relive—Valley Moments—below the line.
Write as many key moments that come to your mind.
Activity: Peaks And Valleys—Habits and Themes
The hard part is done.
Getting your life down on paper is challenging and can, at times, be difficult to look at. However, there may also be an accompanying sense of relief when you see everything in front of you. Hopefully you realized that, “Heck, there have been some challenging times, but I’ve also accomplished and done a lot. Actually, I already have a pretty cool story and I can build on that.”
Now’s the time to do the work to uncover the habits and themes that occurred leading up to, during, and after those times of great success and also those times of great challenge.
The habits and themes that you uncover can illuminate the things that work for you—that lead to on overall sense of life satisfaction and wellbeing—as well as the things that don’t work for you—those things that challenge your sense of satisfaction and wellbeing.
From the Discover Your Peaks and Valleys exercise, your goal is to find any patterns or themes in your life so that you can create more Peak Moments moving forward and avoid Valley Moments.
Directions
Time Investment: 30 minutes
On a new piece of paper, write My Peak Moments.
On an additional piece of paper, write My Valley Moments.
Using your Discover Your Peaks and Valleys timeline, identify 3–4 PeakMoments that you want to explore in more depth and write those on the piece of paper labeled My Peak Moments. Similarly, on the piece of paper labeled My Valley Moments, identify and write down 3–4 Valley Moments that you want to dig into more .
For both your Peaks Moments and your Valley Moments, think about the events that occurred before, during, and after them. Consider who was in your life at the time. Think about what kinds of behaviors you were engaging in. Force yourself to recall as much information about these events as possible.
The purpose of this activity is to help you identify any habits or themes that occur when you’ve experienced Peak Moments as well as any habits or themes that you engage in when you’ve experienced Valley Moments.
Based on what you discover, the goal is to start building up those habits and themes that led to Peak Moments and get a handle on—or eliminate—those habits and themes that led to Valley Moments.
You owe it to yourself to explore your life’s Peak and Valley moments.
From my experience, your life satisfaction and sense of wellbeing depend on it.
